are alarming, but there are other times when they are entertaining-

-and this is one of them. "Many a man prides himself" says Mr.
Bourne, "on his piety or his views of art, whose whole range of

ideas, could they be investigated, would be found ordinary, if not
base, because they have been adopted in compliance with some

external persuasion or to serve some timid purpose instead of
proceeding authoritatively from the living selection of his

hereditary taste." This extract is a fair sample of the book's
thought and of its style. But Mr. Bourne seems to forget that

"persuasion" is a vain thing. The appreciation of great art comes
from within.

It is but the merest justice to say that the transparenthonesty of
Mr. Bourne's purpose is undeniable. But the whole book is simply

an earnest expression of a pious wish; and, like the generality of
pious wishes, this one seems of little dynamic value--besides being

impracticable.
Yes, indeed. Art has served Religion; artists have found the most

exalted inspiration in Christianity; but the light of
Transfiguration which has illuminated the profoundest mysteries of

our sinful souls is not the light of the generating stations, which
exposes the depths of our infatuation where our mere cleverness is

permitted for a while to grope for the unessential among invincible
shadows.

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS--AN APPRECIATION--1907
A couple of years ago I was moved to write a one-act play--and I

lived long enough to accomplish the task. We live and learn. When
the play was finished I was informed that it had to be licensed for

performance. Thus I learned of the existence of the Censor of
Plays. I may say without vanity that I am intelligent enough to

have been astonished by that piece of information: for facts must
stand in some relation to time and space, and I was aware of being

in England--in the twentieth-century England. The fact did not fit
the date and the place. That was my first thought. It was, in

short, an improper fact. I beg you to believe that I am writing in
all seriousness and am weighing my words scrupulously.

Therefore I don't say inappropriate. I say improper--that is:
something to be ashamed of. And at first this impression was

confirmed by the obscurity in which the figure embodying this after
all considerable fact had its being. The Censor of Plays! His

name was not in the mouths of all men. Far from it. He seemed
stealthy and remote. There was about that figure the scent of the

far East, like the peculiaratmosphere of a Mandarin's back yard,
and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, that epoch when mankind tried

to stand still in a monstrousillusion of final certitude attained
in morals, intellect and conscience.

It was a disagreeableimpression. But I reflected that probably
the censorship of plays was an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a

survival, since it seemed obviously at variance with the genius of
the people, but an heirloom of past ages, a bizarre and imported

curiosity preserved because of that weakness one has for one's old
possessions apart from any intrinsic value; one more object of

exotic VIRTU, an Oriental POTICHE, a MAGOT CHINOIS conceived by a
childish and extravagantimagination, but allowed to stand in

stolid impotence in the twilight of the upper shelf.
Thus I quieted my uneasy mind. Its uneasiness had nothing to do

with the fate of my one-act play. The play was duly produced, and
an exceptionallyintelligentaudience stared it coldly off the

boards. It ceased to exist. It was a fair and open execution.
But having survived the freezing atmosphere of that auditorium I

continued to exist, labouring under no sense of wrong. I was not
pleased, but I was content. I was content to accept the verdict of

a free and independent public, judging after its conscience the
work of its free, independent and conscientious servant--the

artist.
Only thus can the dignity of artisticservitude be preserved--not

to speak of the bare existence of the artist and the self-respect
of the man. I shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public.

To the self-respect of the public the present appeal against the
censorship is being made and I join in it with all my heart.

For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and
outlandish figure, the MAGOT CHINOIS whom I believed to be but a

memorial of our forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque
POTICHE, works! The absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be

alive with a sort of (surely) unconscious life worthy of its
traditions. It heaves its stomach, it rolls its eyes, it

brandishes a monstrous arm: and with the censorship, like a Bravo
of old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs its victim from

behind in the twilight of its upper shelf. Less picturesque than
the Venetian in cloak and mask, less estimable, too, in this, that

the assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk deriving no
countenance from the powers of the Republic, it stands more

malevolent, inasmuch that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but
the body, whereas the grotesque thing nodding its mandarin head may

in its absurdunconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of
an honest, of an artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.

This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western
Barbarian and provided by the State with the mortal" target="_blank" title="a.不死的n.不朽的人物">immortal Mr.

Stiggins's plug hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office. An
office of trust. And from time to time there is found an official

to fill it. He is a public man. The least prominent of public
men, the most unobtrusive, the most obscure if not the most modest.

But however obscure, a public man may be told the truth if only
once in his life. His office flourishes in the shade; not in the

rustic shade beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of
mind, where tyranny of every sort flourishes. Its holder need not

have either brain or heart, no sight, no taste, no imagination, not
even bowels of compassion. He needs not these things. He has

power. He can kill thought, and incidentally truth, and
incidentally beauty, providing they seek to live in a dramatic

form. He can do it, without seeing, without understanding, without
feeling anything; out of mere stupidsuspicion, as an irresponsible

Roman Caesar could kill a senator. He can do that and there is no
one to say him nay. He may call his cook (Moliere used to do that)

from below and give her five acts to judge every morning as a
matter of constant practice and still remain the unquestioned

destroyer of men's honest work. He may have a glass too much.
This accident has happened to persons of unimpeachable morality--to

gentlemen. He may suffer from spells of imbecility like Clodius.
He may . . . what might he not do! I tell you he is the Caesar of

the dramatic world. There has been since the Roman Principate
nothing in the way of irresponsible power to compare with the

office of the Censor of Plays.
Looked at in this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in

the odious and the absurd. This figure in whose power it is to
suppress an intellectual conception--to kill thought (a dream for a

mad brain, my masters!)--seems designed in a spirit of bitter
comedy to bring out the greatness of a Philistine's conceit and his

moral cowardice.
But this is England in the twentieth century, and one wonders that

there can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It
is a matter for meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come

to the conclusion in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my
conscience that he must be either an extreme megalomaniac or an

utterly unconscious being.
He must be unconscious. It is one of the qualifications for his

magistracy. Other qualifications are equally easy. He must have
done nothing, expressed nothing, imagined nothing. He must be

obscure, insignificant and mediocre--in thought, act, speech and
sympathy. He must know nothing of art, of life--and of himself.

For if he did he would not dare to be what he is. Like that much
questioned and mysterious bird, the phoenix, he sits amongst the

cold ashes of his predecessor upon the altar of morality, alone of
his kind in the sight of wondering generations.

And I will end with a quotation reproducing not perhaps the exact
words but the true spirit of a lofty conscience.

"Often when sitting down to write the notice of a play, especially
when I felt it antagonistic to my canons of art, to my tastes or my

convictions, I hesitated in the fear lest my conscientious blame
might check the development of a great talent, my sincere judgment

condemn a worthy mind. With the pen poised in my hand I hesitated,
whispering to myself 'What if I were perchance doing my part in

killing a masterpiece.'"
Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaitre--dramatist and

dramaticcritic, a great citizen and a high magistrate in the
Republic of Letters; a Censor of Plays exercising his august office

openly in the light of day, with the authority of a European
reputation. But then M. Jules Lemaitre is a man possessed of

wisdom, of great fame, of a fine conscience--not an obscure hollow
Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr. Stiggins's plug hat and

cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother--the State.
Frankly, is it not time to knock the improper object off its shelf?

It has stood too long there. Hatched in Pekin (I should say) by
some Board of Respectable Rites, the little caravanmonster has